THE WAY WE LAUGHED []

Longwinded but moving story of two brothers in mid-century Italy. In Italian with English subtitles. Running time: 124 minutes. Not rated (nothing offensive). At the Film Forum, Houston Street, between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street.

———-

‘THE Way We Laughed,” which won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, is a longwinded, slow-starting but moving film about two orphaned young brothers who emigrate from Sicily to Turin in a time when Italy was still mired in postwar poverty and underdevelopment.

It begins in 1958, ends in 1964, and is divided into six “chapters,” entitled “Arrivals,” “Deceptions” “Money” “Letters,” Blood” and “Families.”

Each of these chapters deals with the events of a single day but represents the changes that have taken place over a year in the brothers’ lives – and in the life of Italy itself.

The older brother, Giovanni (Enrico Lo Verso) is a decent, humble fellow, deeply ashamed of his own illiteracy, and desperate for Pietro (Francesco Giuffrida), his intelligent younger brother to get an education and become a schoolteacher.

Giovanni makes tremendous sacrifices to pay for his brother’s education, unaware that the repellent little creep spends his book money on fancy clothes and skips school.

If that weren’t depressing enough, as time goes on, Giovanni becomes a kind of labor boss, whose obsession with making money for his brother makes him ruthless and manipulative.

The parallels between the two brothers’ lives – the ways their personalities are distorted by experience and the ways they redeem themselves – are heavily schematic, and the final twist in the tale seems improbable.

But writer-director Gianni Amelio is skilled enough to make “The Way We Laughed” work as a personal story even as he gives you a sense of the way massive economic change can be both a liberating and a destructive force.